The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(7)

“We’ll have to take it in turns,” said Alex, sinking into the chair. “If possible, we work in groups. One group fills the beetles and stops the portals, while the other maps out the keep in search of the essence.”

All around the room, he was met with nods and noises of agreement.

“It’s settled then. We begin at dawn,” Lintz replied. “But for now, you should all rest.”

Alex was glad of the instruction. Even if he hadn’t been missing a piece of his soul, he knew dealing with the red fog would have taken its toll on him. His body was trying to recover from the fight against Alypia, and every time he did something that drained his energy, he knew he was taking a step back in the healing process. An acute exhaustion trickled through his system, unlike any tiredness Alex had ever known; it was almost as if the very weight of his body had become too much and was beginning to crush him from the inside.

It’s nothing a good sleep won’t fix, he told himself, repeating the mantra to prevent fear from creeping in. In truth, he had no idea what kind of pressure he was putting his body under, or what the consequences might be in the long term.

“I need some air,” he croaked, his eyes glancing toward the far window.

With Aamir’s help, Alex rose and stepped toward it. His burning lungs were desperate for some fresh oxygen, and his eyes longed for the sight of something that wasn’t hewn from hefty gray stone. However, as he reached the windowsill, he saw that the landscape beyond was blurred from sight behind a veil of shimmering bronze fog. He could make out vague shapes on the horizon—the hint of trees, perhaps the point of a mountain—but nothing solid. It was all a haze, no doubt intended to keep morale low. How could the prisoners hope, when they had no outside reference to remind them of why they kept living? Without sky and trees and sunshine, the world became very small and very bleak.

Alex tried not to let the disappointing view get to him as he attempted to drag wisps of crisp oxygen into his lungs, filtered through the bronze fog. When he focused all his attention on breathing, needing the pureness of real air, it made him feel suddenly panicky, like he was trying to breathe through a straw filled with cotton wool. If he hadn’t been conscious of Aamir’s hand upon his arm, he knew he might have allowed the penetrating fear to take hold of him. As it was, Aamir’s presence calmed him somewhat, reminding him that he still had his friends to fight for, even if he couldn’t see the trees and the sky that might give him renewed hope. Someday, he would look upon the real sky again, the one drifting aimlessly above his hometown, and that would be worth everything.

Across the room, he heard Natalie and Ellabell begin to share all that had happened at Stillwater with the professors in hushed tones, with Jari chiming in where he saw fit. Alex paused, not wanting to disturb their chat, though part of him wanted to go to where they were congregated and encourage them to talk about the illusions they had seen while under the hold of the nightmare fog. No one had seemed eager to discuss it, and Alex didn’t want to pry, not when the group’s mood had only just returned to some semblance of normalcy. Suddenly, he heard the name “Gaze” mentioned in somber tones and saw Lintz’s face fall; it was more sadness than Alex could take.

He turned back around, his attention distracted a moment later by the sound of a splash. Peering curiously over the edge of the windowsill, he saw that there was murky water below, running in a kind of moat around the keep itself, but he couldn’t make out the shape of the thing that had made the loud splash. Whatever it was, it was big, the ripples it had made continuing to undulate outward before bumping against the steep, muddy bank. He watched the still moat closely, wondering if the creature might emerge again. For a moment, he thought he saw a vast shadowy form moving beneath the surface, but it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

He let his exhausted eyes wash over the hazy fog again, and the blurry shapes of trees behind it, and, beyond that, the possibility of a mountain peeking up on the distant horizon. He closed his eyes, imagining that the real world lay just beyond those imagined peaks.

He turned again as Lintz and Demeter moved toward the door of the tower, saying their farewells. The professor toyed with his moustache anxiously, his face a picture of grief. Alex understood; it couldn’t have been easy to hear the fate of a much-beloved friend. Guard duty called the two older men back into the depths of the keep again, and they had to heed it, checking the prison for any escapees, locking all the doors that needed locking, keeping everything in order.

As soon as they had departed, Alex was suddenly overwhelmed with prickles of irritation, which flared inside him and spread like wildfire, clawing under his skin. He struggled to suppress the annoyance that had emerged so unexpectedly, breathing heavily to try to calm his piqued emotions. It didn’t make sense for him to feel something so violently, so quickly. Perhaps it had something to do with the barrier and its crackling, livid magic.

Then claustrophobia washed over him just as suddenly, and his chest felt like it was constricting, his throat tightening. The stabbing pain inside his body came back with a vengeance, pulsing through his nerves like a white-hot blade, and it was as if the walls were closing in on him.

He stood quickly, wanting to escape the room, but his body had other ideas. The pain made his vision go blurry for a moment, his knees buckling as he crumpled to the floor. Natalie reached out to catch him, her reflexes lightning fast, setting him on his feet again. Hurriedly, he scrambled to regain his balance, pushing away from her in an attempt to stop his unruly anti-magic from running through his hands and into her skin. He didn’t want his uncontrolled emotions to hurt any of those around him.